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Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

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Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#151

Company-provided lunch provides an opportunity to build relationship among the coworkers. Most people do not says "no" to free lunch, especially if it's good. So, they naturally sit down together to eat. When I worked at a company that offered free lunch, the company used it to help build rapport and camaraderie among the coworkers. It's one time during the day when the entire team can sit down and eat lunch together…

When I worked at a company that offered free lunch, the company used it to help build rapport and camaraderie among the coworkers. It's one time during the day when the entire team can sit down and eat lunch together and get to know about each other, which is not possible through Slack nor via meetings. I stopped bringing my lunch to work and go out to eat specifically to get a break from my coworkers. Not that there…

And that’s great if that’s what you want. OP was just saying that free, internal lunch promotes team bonding for those who do desire it.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#152
This title is a little hyperbolic. There has exactly been two proposals. One in Mountain View, that only applies to a single office development. That also doesn't ban office cafeterias, but limits subsidies. The other one is in proposal stages in SF, which is a regulatory capture by the local restaurant industry. Unlikely to pass

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to self-rule outside the enumerated powers of the federal government (and thus, the general police power of the states) is a right of the people against the federal government.

At the risk of being a Debbie Downer, I don't think it matters much whether or not your view has merits. The federal armed forces reduce this to an argumentum ad baculum .

In practice, not usually. It's usually resolved in the courts, often partially or wholly in favor of state power, without resort to argumentum ad baculum.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#155
post #148

> The ban wouldn't be retroactive, however, so on-site food at companies like Google and Twitter would still be available Cool, so start-ups lose a potential hiring perk to the incumbents. (Does anyone know the story behind this bill? Which politicians and restaurants supported it? I’d like to avoid the latter going forward.)

The title could almost be: "Large tech companies lobby local officials to allow them to offer exclusive employment benefits."

Is that what happened? Did large tech companies advocate for this?

Or is that a conspiracy theory?

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#156
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think? In my opinion, it's the manifestation of the hippy culture of the 60s and 70s. California was never a hands-off state, never had the hands-off tradition that Texas had. I don't see any reason to expect that the same stuff would happen in TX.

Austin was the hippy central of Texas until the tech boom.

Different kind of hippies, I believe.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#157

I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid. As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do? I'm enraged.

I sure wouldn't call this progressivism of any sort, for that matter.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#158
Lotta hate for Mountain View in the comments here, which is ironic because with this ordnance Mountain View is trying to fix a problem that tech companies get a lot of hate on HN for. I've got mixed feelings about this, so I'll try and explain both sides:

The problem MV's fixing is the perception that highly-paid tech workers have become a class of their own, isolated from the larger communities in which they live and insulated from negative social consequences in the communities around them. When you get paid a high salary, eat at work, only socialize with coworkers, have all your logistic needs taken care of by your rich employer, and only go home to sleep, it's really easy to feel like your city's problems are other peoples' problems. In other threads on HN, you will see plenty of mudslinging about tech workers who step over homeless people on their way to work or kick neighborhood teams off a public basketball court so they can play a company game.

The Village at San Antonio is supposed to be exactly the type of mixed-use, mixed-income development that urban planners salivate over today. It's got a mix of luxury apartments and affordable housing over street-level retail, connected by pedestrian thoroughfares to the office space that Facebook is about to rent. There are over a dozen restaurants within walking distance, ranging from Chili's, Veggie Grill, and Sajj to The Counter burgers to upscale sit-down places, along with a Walmart, a Safeway, and a Whole Foods. The whole point is to fix all the problems with tech insularity and wealth polarization that everyone complains about here.

OTOH, the cynic in me says that it won't actually do a damn thing about this, and that tech workers will stand around talking to each other and ignoring the locals in line for Veggie Grill while the service workers around them eat at the Walmart cafeteria. And the only effect will be to reduce efficiency for people who could otherwise just grab free food, take it back to their desk, and get back to work. A lot of the point of the free cafes at Google was to cut out the friction of deciding where to eat, walking there, and paying, and instead just focus on the job we had to do.

There's no free lunch. Sometimes it turns out our desires are contradictory, and the flip side of intangibles like community engagement are reduced efficiency and heavy-handed regulation.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#159

I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid. As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do? I'm enraged.

> This is an example of progressivism gone awry.

Except it's actually an example of crony capitalism gone...well, perfectly according to design, actually.

There's nothing even remotely progressive about restricting all other businesses just to boost business for a particular industry.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#160
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.

What about all the employees that work in the cafeterias at Facebook?

Suddenly everyone cares about their dear Facebook cafeteria workers?

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Facebook-cafeteria-worke...

People cheating on their income taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars a year each in free lunches are now more likely to comply with the law. This seems like a step in the right direction.

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